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From: Martha Lincoln <martha.lincoln@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 8:52 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Does anyone have a recommendation for good sources on the history
of street vending and/or the informal economy in Hanoi?
--
Martha Lincoln
Doctoral Student
Department of Anthropology
CUNY Graduate Center
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From: DiGregorio, Michael <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
Date: 2008/10/5
To: Vietnam Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Martha,
I think I did the first research on street traders in contemporary Hanoi roughly 16 years ago. See Urban Harvest published by the East West Center. Li Tana followed this up with a monograph called Peasants on the move. My focus was Hanoi's recyclers, who are largely female, and Li Tana’s was on xichlo drivers, many of whom were the husbands of the recyclers. Most came from the southern part of Nam Dinh.
Mike
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Michael DiGregorio, Program Officer for Media, Arts, Culture and Education
The Ford Foundation
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From: Lisa Drummond <drummond@yorku.ca>
Date: 2008/10/6
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sorry, Michael, but you didn't.
My MA research, conducted in 1991 in Hanoi, was on street traders, as well as women working in other sorts of informal sector enterprises. Adam McCarty also did a survey on the informal sector in Hanoi in 1991 (it might have been 1990, I'm not sure).
While no one to my knowledge has produced a historical study of street trading as a global subject, ie not focussed on particular sectors, I am, to self-promote for a moment, currently writing a book on public space in Hanoi from the French colonial period to the present. In this study, I discuss attitudes towards sidewalk trade and traders over these 100 years plus.
A quick Google Scholar search (street trading + Hanoi, informal sector + Hanoi) turned up a number of relevant sources.
And on that note, a comment not meant specifically for Martha, only inserted here because I am otherwise so rarely prompted to post...
It might be helpful if posters to the list asking for bibliographic help gave some indication of what they have already turned up. I have seen quite a few posts that read as if the posters expects the list to do the work for him/her. I suggest it might be more useful for posters to share what they have, first, especially scholars writing from locations where internet and library access are plentiful, and then ask if they've missed anything important which might be in another language, unpublished, in journals not included in databases, etc; that kind of help is the real richness and reward of a list like this. In other words, I expect that posters to the list will have done a little work already. I hope that's not too cantankerous as an expectation.
Cheers,
Lisa
_______________________________
Lisa Drummond
Associate Professor, Urban Studies
Division of Social Science, Arts
York University
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From: Erica J. Peters <e-peters-9@alumni.uchicago.edu>
Date: Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 2:51 PM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To follow up on Lisa's post I wanted to note that in March 2008, VSG had a thread on "Hanoi Street Vendors," which comes right up if you search google with the words: Hanoi street vendors VSG. At the time, I provided a number of historical sources on street vendors in Hanoi and Saigon, so that's one place to start.
I hope that Judith can link the two threads, so that this week's helpful suggestions can be archived with the thread from last March.
Erica
Erica J. Peters
Board Member, Asian Culinary Forum
Director, Culinary Historians of Northern California
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